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> 3 > > > Chapter One WARRIOR BOATMEN IN APRIL 542, Spanish soldiers encamped along the Mississippi River with Hernando de Soto first heard the name “Quigualtam.” According to Indians living near the mouth of the Arkansas River, Quigualtam was a powerful nation led by a chief of the same name who controlled the great river a short distance to the south. For reasons outlined in the story that follows, the Spaniards would never meet Chief Quigualtam, nor would they set eyes on his citadel, but they would soon come to fear and respect his power. The De Soto expedition had landed on the west coast of Florida in May 539 and followed a haphazard route across the Southeast in search of gold-laden native states such as those recently conquered by the Spanish in Peru and Mexico. By the time De Soto reached the Mississippi River, he and his army had covered close to two thousand miles. The Spaniards sustained themselves on this long campaign by taking advantage of the communal maize granaries they found at the ceremonial centers of the chiefdoms they encountered along their route. A successful strategy that De Soto used time and time again was to follow the natives’ trails from outlying ceremonial centers and villages to the chiefdom’s main center. Along the way, they sacked the storage granaries, which the hungry soldiers often found stocked with maize, beans, dried plums, and walnuts.2 The Spaniards routinely burned the villages, killed the men, enslaved the women, and attempted to make hostages of the chiefs. The combat was often desperate, but the military prowess of Spanish cavalry, footmen, and their savage war dogs had always proved more than a match for any Native American militia. In the army’s wake lay a sprawl of destruction across the Southeast, the survivors left deprived of their leadership, their houses, and their stores of food.3 The Spaniards spent the winter of 54–542 camped beside the Arkansas River in what is now east-central Arkansas. Their North American campaign happened to coincide with a period of unusually cold weather that archaeologists > 4 5 6 7 8 9 0  2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 20 < WARRIOR BOATMEN When Europeans returned to the Lower Mississippi Valley a little over a century after De Soto, they came to stay. The expeditions of Marquette and Jolliet, La Salle and Tonti, and the corps of missionaries, soldiers, and entrepreneurs who followed behind them, found a place that was drastically different from the ostentatious world of Quigualtam, Guachoya, Aquixo, and their legions of warrior boatmen. The Natchez Indians, a small remnant of those sixteenth-century river empires, were about to play a brief and tragic part in shaping world history through their association with the agents and armies of two European superpowers : England and France. ...

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